Trump Russian Buddy Bragged About Using Russia To Elect Trump. TOTALLY NORMAL.

And Putin did help!

We alluded to this story in our post this morning about "HERE IS A BUNCH OF TRUMP-RUSSIA SHIT," but the plot, as they say, has thickened. During the presidential campaign, while Donald Trump was telling everybody "No Russia, no Russia, YOU ARE THE RUSSIA," the Trump organization was trying (and failing) to get a deal for a yoooge glamorous tacky-ass Trump Tower in Moscow. The two men pushing that deal were Felix Sater, a mobbed up Russian-American criminal who worked in Trump Tower and with the Trump Organization from time to time (by which we mean "for many years"), and Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen, who seems to be covered in Russian dressing in his own right.

 Here is a long backgrounder on Trump's Russian business dealings with Felix Sater. Here's another one, which includes the fun detail that Cohen and Sater have been buddies since they were kids. Basically, as The New Yorker explains, Sater was Big Donald's original lifeline to Russia. (Trump's official line is that he's not sure he would even recognize Sater if Sater was pissing on him while he was on fire.)

In reporting this weekend, the  Washington Post  alluded to emails between Cohen and Sater in November 2015, where Sater was bragging about how he could leverage a possible Trump Tower Moscow deal into getting Vladimir Putin to throw his weight (and his electoral votes, we guess) behind Trump:

Sater wrote to Trump Organization Executive Vice President Michael Cohen “something to the effect of, ‘Can you believe two guys from Brooklyn are going to elect a president?’ ” said one person briefed on the email exchange.

Now the New York Times   has published some of those emails! Indeed, the NYT is being a real snotty potty about how the Washington Post   talked about the emails, whereas the NYT has them , like neener neener.

“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Mr. Sater wrote in an email. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.” [...]

In another email, Mr. Sater envisioned a ribbon-cutting in Moscow. “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Mr. Sater wrote. [...]

Mr. Sater presented himself as so influential in Russia that he helped arrange a 2006 trip that Mr. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, took to Moscow. “I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,” he said.

Now, to be completely fair, we should point out that the Trump Organization has responded "Nuh uh," and Ivanka says, "I didn't sit there," and Michael Cohen is like "Oh there goes Silly Felix again, being such a Silly Felix!" (Those may not be exact quotes.)

The NYT even included a couple of screenshots. This one, which includes the Ivanka quote, is fun:

"Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it . I will get all of Putin's team to buy in on this ..." Because ... that's how getting American presidents elected works. Let's call Russia and see if they can tinker around and get "our boy" in the Oval, where he belongs!

Now, Michael Cohen has been strongly wording his denials about all this, but as we were finishing this post, the  Washington Post  was like, "Oh yeah, New York Times , you big lazy dork fucks? Well now WE have another scoop!" WaPo reports that in January 2016, two months after all these emails with Felix Sater, and as the deal for Trump Tower Moscow was Trumping itself into a piss-puddle of abject failure, Michael Cohen got on his Obamaphone and jammed out a quick email to Dmitry Peskov, one of Putin's top boys. It said, "HALP!" Cohen says in a statement that he sent the email because Silly Felix told him to, but Peskov didn't respond, and anyway, the Art Of The Deal fell apart two weeks later, therefore SAYS WHO?

At the rate Trump-Russia collusion/conspiracy news is coming out today, we should have a full confession and resignation from Donald Trump by 5: 30 PM, hahahaha just kidding, this is just the hell we live in now.

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[  New York Times  / Washington Post ]